FlyDubai has quite rightly insisted that it is premature to speculate that pilot fatigue caused last Saturday's crash of its Boeing 737-800 in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don with the death all of 62 people aboard. There have been reports that the Cypriot captain of the aircraft, Aristos Sokratous, had resigned and was working out his three months notice. The reason given for his departure was fatigue. There remains, therefore, a strong possibility that as he sought to land in bad weather at Rostov his judgement was impaired by tiredness with the result that the aircraft missed the runway and burst into flames. There was a time when being an airline pilot was regarded as a handsome and desirable job. It was not only highly-paid, but pilots got to travel all over the world and stay in swanky hotels for extended stopovers after long international flights. This was in the days when flying was still something that only the very rich or big companies could afford. How times have changed. Air travel is now a commonplace and the number of airlines has mushroomed and pushed aside the few once dominant carriers. In such circumstances it might be thought that the demand for pilots would have increased their status and value. Ironically, just the opposite has happened. Flight schools, especially in North America took up the slack from the traditional airlines which used to hire and train their own pilots. They ended up turning out more commercial pilots than even an expanding airline industry needed. On top of this, the arrival of low-fare, no-frills carriers meant that operational costs were pared to the bone with no more five-star hotels and no long crew stopovers. Moreover, since the new challenger airlines focus on regional routes, flight deck crews are doing round trips and if the routes are short hops, more than one trip a day. The once romantic airline pilot looks very much more like a bus driver these days. And it is rare to find that he or she is now one of the highest paid professionals. Yet even though they are being worked harder, tiredness ought not be an issue, since the International Civil Aviation Organization along with country regulators such as the General Authority of Civil Aviation of Saudi Arabia lay down strict rules on the time that pilots can be flying and the amount of rest they are required to have before taking the controls of an aircraft again. Per passenger mile, flying remains the safest mode of transport precisely because of the exacting procedures that must be followed by properly run airlines. Those that cannot abide by these standards are for instance banned from European airspace. So how can pilots be getting so tired? The answer may be because they are having to do less on the flight deck. Automatic pilots on long flights and instrument landing at major airports mean that pilots now have a supervisory rather than an active role. While they need to be ready to intervene in emergencies, much of their working life is spent watching instruments and running checks. Could it be that boredom is making them tired? It will not be long before there will be no more human pilots in fighter jets and bombers, only robotics. Will the same be true of airliners and if so how desirable would this be?
